Monday, December 13, 2010
Largest tuna ever caught: Michael Livingston sets world record
SAN DIEGO, USA--Glendale Unified administrator Michael Livingston caught a 405-pound yellowfin tuna aboard Capt. Mike Lackey's 80-foot sportfishing vessel, Vagabond, off Mexico - setting the new world record for the Largest tuna ever caugh with a rod and reel.

Photo: Mike Livingston and the World's largest tuna caught with a rod and reel. Photo courtesy of Michael Livingston
(enlarge photo)

More than 100 people crowded around the fishing hook scale at Point Loma Sport Fishing in San Diego to see the yellowfin tuna — which measured 85 inches from nose to tail and 61 inches in girth — hoisted into the air.

Livingston said he spent 2 hours, 40 minutes playing the giant fish before reeling it in. His previous personal record was 100 pounds.

The beast was finally subdued by a Penn International 30SW reel blueprinted by Cal Sheets, a custom rod made by Livingston himself, and a 100-foot topshot of 100-pound test monofilament over more than 700 yards of 100-pound test superbraid line, with a live sardine pinned on a 9/0 Owner Ringed Super Mutu hook.

"It was my moment, my time," Livingston said. "I'm certainly not the best angler, but I had enough skill to reel this one in. It was just my day."

Livingston told the San Diego Union-Tribune it was "fish of a lifetime."

Guinness World Records listed Ken Niles (USA) as the world record holder for "Most species of fish caught on fly rod in one year"; he caught 85 different species of fish using a fly rod on in one year.